Aaron Warren Whitney seems to have been in business by 1844, when he exhibited some machines at a trade show in Boston. In 1847 he patented a sheet metal rolling machine. Whitney specialized in tinsmithing machinery: smaller machines for working sheet metal, such as rollers, folders, stakes, plus hand tools such as drills, countersinks, and reamers. In 1870 he relocated the business to Smithville, NJ.
Advertisement from the 1853 "Massachusetts Register"
Information Sources
- At the 1844 Fourth Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, A. W. Whitney of Woodstock, Vt., exhibited three tinners' machines. They did not win any awards.
- Thanks to Dave Potts for bringing our attention to this maker and for doing much of the research reported here.
- eBay listing for a bar folder from A. W. Whitney Co., Smithville, NJ, and reportedly bearing an Oct. 20, 1868 patent date. There was an August 20, 1868 bar-folder patent granted to A. W. Whitney that seems to be a likely match.
- An article (PDF) on musician Charles Morris Cobb mentions that "he worked as a machinist in the A. W. Whitney machine shop in West Woodstock from 1859 to 1870, when Mr. Whitney moved the shop to Smithville, New Jersey. "